Dear Disney please for the love of GOD take SWTOR from EA

[mvallas]

I am yet to have someone explain to me how control over the Star Wars IP wouldn't extend to swtor...

The best reasoning I've heard is that EA has swtor until their contact is up for renewal, much like how SOE had to renew for SWG and couldn't come to a deal so they lost it.

I knew somebody who was the project lead on a Star Wars video game (he'll remain anonymous for his sake) and the one thing he told me was that Lucasfilm constantly looked over their shoulder and nitpicked every single harry detail and made constant gameplay decisions (mostly relating to races, locations, presentation and dialogue). His exact quote to me in response to this was "I was so fed up with them I was actually about to take my entire Star Wars collection, melt it down, and mail it in a box back to Lucas!"

So... in THEORY they could...

But you have to consider that they (EA/Lucasfilm) made this deal waaaay before the Disney deal was brokered. I mean, even FOX still retains the distribution rights to the previous movies.

[Psychlon]

If Lucasarts is just half the "lore manager" they seem to be, it is absolutely no surprise that stuff is getting delayed/ redesigned and everything. In the end... it matters more that LucasArts/ EA and Bioware are happy with their product before any player will be allowed to see it and that can be a very slow/ tiring process.

[cling09]

it is not a good game as a sub required MMO,
it is sux,
its true value is the 1st 60,
then nothing else,
all thing changed after 1.1 should be put into a expansion,
and the game should be B2P,
cause the hell is that it doesn't deserve 15 per month.

[Zatheyll]

Curious if OP would have similar childlike enthusiasm for a MMO centered around more traditional Disney concepts - like let's say black rodents with big ears. Rephrased: kindly remind me, what are their key competencies regarding online games?

They did a great job collaborating with Square Enix for Kingdom Hearts.

I'm happy people aren't bashing Disney for being Disney. Disney has loads of money, and they know what to do with it and what to make that people enjoy (maybe not you, but others) and still gets them cash. They definitely have the money to do something with SWtOR (if) they ever got it, but I don't think they want to even try fixing it. I don't really think Disney wants to get into the MMO market itself much seeing how frail and prone to failure it is. They'd probably just help finance more non-MMO games in the universe.

[diviner]

People give Swtor alot of hate, but it's actually a good game. It just can't exist with wow. Too many people wouldnt play it because they looked at it as WoW's direct competition, and wow has sucked up most of the people that are interested in mmo's for the most part. Swtor on release was alot of fun. They put alot of work into it, and it showed. Disney could take it over and create the most stunning, incredible game ever created, and it still wouldn't have a shot.

Wrong.. clarely people who saying bad stuff about swtor have played it :|
I bought swtor expecting something different and no, i wasn't hiped.. i was marely imagining what the game would look like as an mmo in my head and it didn't turn out to be like that at all. The game had insane potential and it turned out to be just a decent roleplaying mmo-ish co-op.. that u play till the end and bb, and even the quests at some points and the zones are too dull. All the hate given to swtor is well deserved. It ofc doesn't mean the game is very bad.. it is just not good enough not even close.

[cling09]

For the love of Bob, learn to understand maths and economics on the simplest level. For 2011 ActiBlizz digital revenues were $1.6 billion, that included WoW and Call of Duty. ~Half of the subscriptions are in China, they pay less than two bucks per month.

I swear I'm gonna copy this and just ctrl-c, ctrl-v it everytime somebody posts this garbage.

i sustain this post,
chinese are not stupid, they won't pay 15 per month for a crap.

[Psychlon]

Wrong.. clarely people who saying bad stuff about swtor have played it :|
I bought swtor expecting something different and no, i wasn't hiped.. i was marely imagining what the game would look like as an mmo in my head and it didn't turn out to be like that at all. The game had insane potential and it turned out to be just a decent roleplaying mmo-ish co-op.. that u play till the end and bb, and even the quests at some points and the zones are too dull. All the hate given to swtor is well deserved. It ofc doesn't mean the game is very bad.. it is just not good enough not even close.

I'm playing the game and no... the game doesn't deserve all the hate. Hate decisions made by EA/ Bioware, agree/ disagree with other peoples opinion but the game is actually totally playable in all aspects and that it doesn't draw all the people from WoW is not a negative aspect to me.

---------- Post added 2013-01-03 at 11:49 AM ----------

i sustain this post,
chinese are not stupid, they won't pay 15 per month for a crap.

"Half of the subscriptions are in China, they pay less than two bucks per month."

Reading... it's not that difficult.

[Herecius]

Upon buying Lucasfilm, Disney said that Lucasarts would be retooled and refocused to work on... social games. It is reasonable to expect that Disney doesn't really care very much about SWTOR either.

I only pray that Star Wars 1313 doesn't become vaporware...

[edgecrusher]

Upon buying Lucasfilm, Disney said that Lucasarts would be retooled and refocused to work on... social games. It is reasonable to expect that Disney doesn't really care very much about SWTOR either.

I only pray that Star Wars 1313 doesn't become vaporware...

I think they're talking about the studio proper. I doubt they'd stop licensing an IP like Star Wars out. Success or failure, they can still make a ton of cash off of the games.

[cling09]

I'm playing the game and no... the game doesn't deserve all the hate. Hate decisions made by EA/ Bioware, agree/ disagree with other peoples opinion but the game is actually totally playable in all aspects and that it doesn't draw all the people from WoW is not a negative aspect to me.

---------- Post added 2013-01-03 at 11:49 AM ----------





Reading... it's not that difficult.

use ur brain and think,
it is not that difficult.

Infracted: Please post constructively or not at all.

[Beavis]

For the love of Bob, learn to understand maths and economics on the simplest level. For 2011 ActiBlizz digital revenues were $1.6 billion, that included WoW and Call of Duty. ~Half of the subscriptions are in China, they pay less than two bucks per month.

I swear I'm gonna copy this and just ctrl-c, ctrl-v it everytime somebody posts this garbage.

Get over yourself. So, I counted the subs from China using the wrong dollar figure, there's no need to be a self-righteous asshole about it. 1.6 billion dollars from subscriptions and digital transactions is still a third of the company's total revenue.

[Psychlon]

use ur brain and think,
it is not that difficult.

make clear posts and quote what is actually related....

[The Handsome Stranger]

First and foremost, Disney had absolutely nothing to do with the Avengers movie, that was in production long before Disney bought out Marvel. Disney just slapped on their logo, and counted money.


As for Disney and SWTOR, leave Disney out of anything video game/PC game related. Disney makes terrible games. They purchase terrible developers, not counting Lucasarts. They have no clue. If Disney was smart, they would start up the old Lucasarts point and click adventures from back in the day, ah the countless hours I vividly remember playing those. Yes, you microwave the hamster.

As for SWTOR, I think its headed in the right direction. Getting rid of all the empty servers was a huge start, the server I play on is always hopping. If the game was dying, as some speculated, I doubt they would be selling a expansion. Hopefully the expansion is worth the 10 bucks.

[Herecius]

As for Disney and SWTOR, leave Disney out of anything video game/PC game related. Disney makes terrible games. They purchase terrible developers, not counting Lucasarts. They have no clue. If Disney was smart, they would start up the old Lucasarts point and click adventures from back in the day, ah the countless hours I vividly remember playing those. Yes, you microwave the hamster.

I hate to say it, but the 'Disney makes terrible video games' stereotype really hasn't been true for a good, long while. For starters, Disney doesn't even really make games anymore, they license out properties for others to make them. And in that vein, the Kingdom Hearts games have at least mostly been excellent (with a few missteps). Both of the Epic Mickey games have been quite good. The LEGO PotC is perfectly good.

Lucasarts is now part of Disney, though it'll remain its own studio, Disney has stated that they're refocusing it towards social games, so expect to see stuff like... Star Wars facebook games and things.

[Purple]

I'm not really happy with how things were or.. are. That said, I don't really see EA, Bioware or Disney being entities that could do things with the IP, in the context of an MMO, that I would like. Honestly, I'm going to say the same thing I said about TESO. I don't want TESO, I want a TES game. The same applies to a Star Wars RPG, for me, I just can't care about an MMO anymore. Give me a single player game. I really don't see them handing the Star Wars IP over to any of the developers doing interesting things in the MMO territory, and Bioware, I'm sorry, just don't rank amongst them in any manner.

No I'm not calling Bioware terrible, they're capable of a lot in their own right. I'm just convinced from first hand experience that MMOs are not their strong suite, the best portions of SWTOR are all portions that could have been made exponentially better in the context of a single player RPG. If they want to keep using Bioware, great, no issues, just.. keep it single player. Bioware have their zone and multiplayer is not that zone.

[Baar]

Its more than just smaller.

The pc gaming community is smaller.
The mmo community is infinitesimally small.

I know. He just seemed to think MMO's are the biggest gamer market. When they are most likely the smallest gamer market.

[Bardarian]

I know. He just seemed to think MMO's are the biggest gamer market. When they are most likely the smallest gamer market.

I think its because of the way people view WoW as "big". They see 4 million subscribers and 6 million PPH accounts and think "That's the biggest MMO on the market! 10 million players must be huge!"

[Baar]

Reading... it's not that difficult.

So you wouldn't mind showing me where you read that the pay that little?

---------- Post added 2013-01-03 at 10:10 AM ----------

I think its because of the way people view WoW as "big". They see 4 million subscribers and 6 million PPH accounts and think "That's the biggest MMO on the market! 10 million players must be huge!"

Thats just it. It is huge for MMO's. For games in general it only breaks the surface.

[Kittyvicious]

I think its because of the way people view WoW as "big". They see 4 million subscribers and 6 million PPH accounts and think "That's the biggest MMO on the market! 10 million players must be huge!"

Not to mention the fact that they specifically referenced money as somehow indicative of the size of a playerbase. Does.not.correlate.

739,165,030 + 311,591,917 = 1.5 Billion people. (est)

That's the population of the US and Europe. Arguably the largest portion of actual subscribers. This means 4-6% of those populations play WoW. That's actually much larger than you would think, but compare it to other businesses and it's barely a drop in the bucket. Here's some data that shows that, and it's almost a year old.

Facebook
901 million Active Users (3/12). Estimated to be 1 billion by year’s end.
An average of 3.2 billion Likes and Comments generated per day (Q1 2012).
Twitter
140 Million Active Users (5/12).
400 Million Tweets per Day (6/12).
Walmart
1 Million transactions per hour.
Walmart’s database is estimated to be 2.5+ petabytes.

[Bardarian]

but compare it to other businesses and it's barely a drop in the bucket.

Fifa comes to mind...